Technically, perhaps, a little wan and flat, the head owed something, nevertheless, to inspiration. Through the mere physical beauty of its features, one might read the sorrow of a spiritual incarnation—the wistfulness of a Christ-converted Eros of the ancient cosmogonies. Here were the right faun’s eyes, brooding pity out of laughter; the rather square jaw, and girlish pointed chin; the baby lips that seemed to have kissed themselves, shape and tint, out of spindle-berries; the little strutting cap and quill even, so queerly contrasted with the staid sobriety of the brow beneath. It was the boy, and the soul of the boy, so far as enthusiasm, working through a strange medium, could interpret it. Beatrice, having secured, had hung the picture in a dim alcove of her chamber; and had further, to ensure its jealous privacy from all inquisition but her own, looped a curtain before. Here, then, a dozen times a day, when alone, had she been wont to pray and confess herself; lust with her finger-tips to charm the barren contours of the face into life; lay her hot cheek to the painted flesh, and weep, and woo, and appeal to it; seek to soften by a hundred passionate artifices the inflexible continence of its gaze. But that had been all before the shock and frenzy of her final repulse. Not once since had she looked on it, until... Came upon her, still crouching self-absorbed, that white morning of the Duke’s tragedy; and, on the vulture wings of it, Narcisso. The beast crept to her, fulsome, hoarse, shaken with a heart-ague. She conned him with a contemptuous curiosity, as he stood unnerved, trembling all through, before her. ’Well?’ she said at last. He grinned and gobbled, gulping for articulation. ’It’s come, Madonna.’ She half rose on her couch, frowning and impatient. ’What, thou sick fool?’ ’Sick!’ he echoed loudly; and then his voice fell again. ’Ay, sick to death, I think. The Duke——’ ’What of him?’ ’Rides to San Stefano.’ ’Does he?’ ’He’ll not ride home again.’ She stared at him in silence a moment; then suddenly breathed out a little wintry laugh. ’So?’ she whispered—’So? Well, thou art not the Duke.’ He struggled to clear, and could not clear, his throat. His low forehead, for all the cold, was beaded with sweat. ’All’s one for that,’ he muttered thickly. ’There’s no class in carrion.’ She still conned him, with that frigid smile on her lips. ’Dost mean they’ll seek to kill thee too?’ He clawed at his head in a frenzy. ’Ay, I mean it.’ ’Why?’ ’Why? quotha. Why, won’t they have held me till this moment for one of themselves?’ ’Till this moment?’ she murmured. ’Ah! I see; this Judas who hath not the courage to play out his part.’